A civil hospital and tuberculosis camp were opened; good hotels under private ownership soon took the place of field tents and rough board shacks; markets and stores were started, bringing in supplies in wholesale lots, and fair-sized buildings soon began to go up in a substantial business section; people began to build houses as rapidly as builders could be found to do the work; churches and schools began to appear where nothing was before; a summer camp for the recuperation of thousands of public school teachers was started in a high valley carpeted with pine-needles, and lecture courses for vacation instruction were instituted; a country club was organised with golf links, a baseball diamond, polo grounds, tennis courts and everything that goes to make a country club successful. The plan of the city was drawn by Architect Burnham of Chicago, who visited Benguet for the purpose, and a great central plaza was provided with artistic, but inexpensive buildings for the accommodation of the two branches of the government.

Cottages in rows went up almost overnight; rich Filipinos and a few Americans built fine homes; beautifully metalled drives began to wind in and out and over and around the hills, and a high-class government automobile bus line was put on the Benguet Road which is the delight of every American or other foreigner in the Islands, as well as of many hundreds of Filipinos who annually take advantage of this wholly novel opportunity to reach a salubrious climate in their own land, and by a route which in any European country would attract scores of thrill-seeking tourists.

And so the Philippine Simla was begun. Its friends, or, in other words, most people have dreams of a great future for it when it shall be a thriving, prosperous city and a health resort for everybody “east of Suez” who needs to seek near by a temperate and invigorating climate.